TAKING HEAD-MEASUREMENTS

burial-place, and was presenting me with a once vital part
of his revered parent. That night Mabruk, unrewarded
and rebuked, restored it to its resting-place. Whether.
Arab feelings would have been hur.t on religious grounds
in such a case, it is impossible to tell, certainly slaves do
not pray in this part of Arabia, and may not normally be
regarded as good Muslims.

To return to Dhufar and head-measuring, it was no
easy task to find willing subjects. There is always in the
minds of rude people the fear of magic or worse,"while the
religious among them hate to be pawed by infidel hands.
In the desert I would not have dared risk putting callipers
over the head of a Badu - an uncouth tribesman might
have drawn his dagger, for at times Badawin have turned
against me for bringing out a camera at the wrong
moment - but here in Dhufar I felt I could safely work
upon prisoners, warders and old friends behind closed
doors, and with these and some enlightened foreign traders
I was able during my stay to make forty-five head-
measurements, covering a wide geographical range and to
take a hundred 'type' portraits.

The work was enlivened by many amusing episodes, but
was physically unpleasant, for the specimens were either
Badawin with tousled hair full of sandy and other accumula-
tions or sedentary townsmen whose locks were a mass of
grease from applications of coco-nut oil. One morning
my clients were to be Somalis, a breed which crosses the
Red Sea to set up as petty merchants in the bazaar or as
middlemen to contract frankincense orchards. Six of
them arrived, and averred in answer to my questions that
they were somal khalis, i.e. Somalis on both sides of the
family - a necessary condition, for specimens of mixed

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